Growing Up in the 50s

Toys and games In entertainment as in the home sexist roles prevailed and meant that there was a clear division between the games of boys and girls.
For boys playing in the sand-pit occupied hours when they were young, using packing cases to build boats and forts. Peter liked to use the crowbar as a gun to make the packing case into a gun boat - a practice very unpopular with his father who considered it too dangerous. Boys and girls spent countless hours playing on trikes scooters.

Boys with a mechanical interest especially enjoyed train sets, miniature steam engines and building with meccano

Girls' games often related to their future roles as wives and mothers. Most girls loved playing with dolls - baby dolls, little girl dolls, Topsy dolls, and Kewpie dolls - but not Barbie dolls in this era. Some had dolls' houses with miniature furniture. Some had china teasets and entertained their dolls to afternoon tea.

Girls' games often related to their future roles as wives and mothers. Most girls loved playing with dolls - baby dolls, little girl dolls, Topsy dolls, and Kewpie dolls - but not Barbie dolls in this era. Some had dolls' houses with miniature furniture. Some had china teasets and entertained their dolls to afternoon tea.

Dolls' clothes were made by adults and by girls interested in sewing. Even during the Depression this was a popular activity as they could be made from scraps of leftover fabric or wool. Girls dressed the dolls and put them in prams, beds or cradles which were often handed down from one generation to the next. They washed the clothes and as fabrics of the time needed ironing some girls even had their own Mrs Potts iron.

Soft toys, often made at home, and Teddy bears were favourites right through the century.
.. skipping, hop scotch, and 'swinging deliriously' on a single high bar at school. There were no Jungle Gyms.

Card games, like Snap, Crib, Five Hundred and patience, and board games, like Ludo, Draughts, Snakes and Ladders and Solitaire were popular with both boys and girls.
ReadingPopular children's books included annuals, yearly bound books of stories, such as the Rupert Annuals or Chums Annuals. Comics Like Little Dot, Chums and Tiger Tim were available and though to today's readers they would seem very innocent and dull they were frowned on by many parents as encouraging laziness about reading. The stories of Pooh Bear, Milly Molly Mandy, Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna and Biggles, Richmal Crompton's William books, and Arthur Ransome's stories about "messing about in boats" were very popular, as well as earlier favourites like Peter Pan, Little Women, Wind in the Willows and Treasure Island.